I am redoing my kitchen floor which is some kind of fir (no one I have talked to so far has been able to identify it with any degree of certainty - I have talked with several woodworking shops and lumber mills). I had an area that I had to completely replace and it came out nice but the color simply does not have the same "aged" appearance. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to artificially make the new floor appear aged before I put on the polyurethane?

I know people who age 'antiques' use chains to distress the surface , not sure the technique exactly but I always pictured dragging heavy chains across the surface of lighlty beating it to break up that crisp planer newness.

Depending on the material you used and the finish (have you finished it yet?) there are a few ways to do this job. I had to do it myself not too long ago in a repair to an antique sideboy.

Aniline dyes (available from professional woodfinisher's supply) or even thinned paints can be used to apply a wash coat to artificially darken new wood. Another potential method is to mix pigments like burn umber into a carrier (boiled linseed oil with a bit of japan drier added comes to mind) and apply this to darken the area.

This is all very subjective - don't experiment on your new floor to do this! Also, allow for the fact that the new finish is going to cause some darkening and this will continue for quite a while as the wood ages and sunlight impinges on it.

One thing I use to age hardwoods is to dissolve degreased steel wool in vinegar (let it sit overnight); it will give a nice brown appearance to nearly black depending on how much used. Not sure how well it will work on pine, as the mixture (as well as the ammonia that surplus suggested) reacts with the tannic acid found in hardwoods, generally not a whole lot found in soft woods.

Joe,
Very strong cold tea works well, RedRose is good and you can make several applications to darken the boards as needed. If that doesn't do it you will have to resort to staining with proprietary stains.

I had a similar thing in my kitchen last year when I made some new maple cabinets to match the 10 year old ones that had mellowed with age....... take a bunch of your scraps... sand the same way as the rest of your work and start experimenting with different stains thinned as needed until you get the look you want.... it took me about 10 tries to get it and you can't tell where the newer stuff begins and the older leaves off.

I don't think there is a magic product straight out of a can to do this..... your simply trying to fake years of age so the new can catch up with old and then let nature keep aging them together.

Joe, I would stay away from stains. These will cause your pine to get blotchy spots. Fuming as mentioned above will not work because of the lack of tannin in pine.
Sun light would be your best bet for "aging" or darkening your new pine (I think you said you found some new old stock in the attic). Try a few samples with sunlight and then maybe experiment with some orange and/or amber shellac with a bit of dye. Thes would be available from several mail order houses such as Woodcraft or Woodworkers Supply.

If stain did seem to be the only option make sure to "seal" the pine first with a "pre-stain conditioner". This saturates the soft portions of the pine so that the stain acts more like a wash and sits on the surface for even color. A pre- stain conditioner is available from Minwax or can be made from equal parts of turpentine and boiled linseed oil.Off the shelf would be the easiest -just make sure it stays wet per the instructions.

I think pine (clear and close grain) is a beautiful wood but one of the more difficult woods to finish. When I build furniture with it I usually give it a couple coats of blond shellac and let time and sunlight mellow it out.

If the boards that you found are close to matching in grain characteristic they will eventually age to the same patina -it just takes time. You may think of re-sanding the whole floor.

If you're in Ohio most likely the floor is pine. I have to do this every day with furniture and finished millwork. First thing you do is get an A/B bleach. One part is lye and the other is a real strong hydrogen peroxide. Mix it half and half as per the directions then cut it in half again with water. Test a drop or two on the new area. You don't want it to turn white but just fade a bit. All you are doing is a quick surface oxidation similar to long term sunlight. If it lightens too much cut it some more. Brush onto the new area but keep it off the old area. Then take canned shellac and cut it 80-90% with denatured alcohol. Test a couple of drops on the new section. With this step you start to pick up your "yellowing" and a bit of color. The main reason though is to give a thin seal coat so any glaze, a stain thinned with naptha or mineral spirits, goes on evenly without any blotching because that's what you have to do next. With the bleaching and shellac you should be making some progress. Now mix a little oil based artist colors with a little japan drier in a 12"x8" (or something like that) shallow tupperware container. Just a couple inch squirt in opposite corners. Start with burnt umber and yellow ochre maybe. Get a short bristle brush about an inch wide, dip it in mineral spirits and pull a little bit of color from your corners and mix in the middle. Keep it thin and transparent. Brush a little on the new area right next to the old floor but only on sealed or finished wood and see what you got. If your gettig there mix a larger amount and coat the are and wipe off what you don't need. If your getting close too a decnt match coat with the thinned shellac again to seal off te progress you've made. Go very quickly with the shellac and don't lap or rebrush or you'll mix with your previous layer and pull it all up. If you're lucky all you'll have to do now is tweek the color a bit. After this you're on your own. Keep in mind that any polyurethane you add later will change the color a bit more. The difference in grain between the old flooring, probably tighter grain, and the new, most likely more flat cut, will further complicate it for you. So paint a bit of graining in if you need to. Add a couple of scratches, a bunch of little ones and a real big one about a foot long for effect. A propane torch with a soldering end on it works great. Drop a cigarette and let it burn a bit and a couple of washed out india ink stains help too. Generally, I approach something like this very confidently, only to find out I need to do something completely different. Good luck and remember, the shellac can be washed off with alcohol and the artists oils will come off with mineral spirits for a while if you need to back out of something. Take it easy on the bleach. Sanding is the only way to back out of that one.

Pine wood is beautiful, easy to install and less expensive than most carpet. Pine makes a terrific finished floor. I installed more than 1,000 square feet of pine flooring in my home about 5 years ago. The price was better than that of many other types of wood, and the floors still look great. Then i checked many more sites finally i decided that what to do and how to do .. one of the site is madaanindia.com

You don't give us much to go on, but my first impulse would be to leave it alone. If you are trying to match existing flooring, and it is southern yellow pine or Douglas-fir, then sunlight will get you very close in a few years. If you are trying to match, then stain, dye, or torches will not likely get you there unless you are highly experienced. The only one of those three that I would be even tempted to try is dye (not stain), but resinous wood will not take that very well, and if you did come close you might end up with a permanent contrast after a few years of exposure to sunlight. Kim

I would suggest asking that question at a big box store such as Lowe's in their paint department - especially a store that's in a well heeled section of a large city.

Those stores can take a color sample and match it perfectly. This leads me to wonder if they could custom mix a stain that would get you to the right color. I cannot imagine this getting you to a perfect match but I imagine it would get pretty close. Some time ago, I wanted to match the light green color of banana leaves plus the green-black color of a black diamond watermelon. So I took a banana leaf and a watermelon into the store. They scanned it and the computer spit out a perfect match from their off the shelf pigments. They even saved the recipe in case I needed more later.

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